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Jan Ekstrand on hamstring injuries in football in BJSM

In the recently published article in BJSM, prof. Jan Ekstrand and his colleagues presented the results of their 13-year-long longitudinal analysis of hamstring injuries performed among the 36 UEFA Elite Clubs from 12 European countries.

Between 2001 and 2014, a total of 1614 hamstring injuries were recorded; 22% of players sustained at least one hamstring injury during a season. The overall hamstring injury rate over the 13-year period was 1.20 injuries per 1000 h; while the match injury rate (4.77) was 9 times higher than the training injury rate. The time-trend analysis showed an annual average 2.3% year on year increase in the total hamstring injury rate over the 13-year period. This increase over time was most pronounced in training injuries—these increased by 4.0% per year. The average hamstring injury burden was 19.7 days per 1000 h. The authors conclude the article with findings that training-related hamstring injury rates have increased substantially since 2001 but match-related injury rates have remained stable. Consequently, the challenge is for clubs to reduce training-related hamstring injury rates without impairing match performance.